With fire suppression, many western forests are expected to have fewer gaps and higher stem density of shade-tolerant species as light competition becomes a more significant influence on stand pattern and composition. We compared species composition, structure, spatial pattern, and environmental factors such as light and soil moisture between two old-growth forests: Pacific Northwest western he...

This study used an affordable ground-based portable LiDAR system to provide an understanding of the structural differences between old-growth and secondary-growth Southeastern pine. It provided insight into the strengths and weaknesses in the structural determination of portable systems in contrast to airborne LiDAR systems. Portable LiDAR height profiles and derived metrics and indices (e.g., ...

Woody plant encroachment into grasslands and rangelands is a world-wide phenomenon but detailed descriptions of changes in geographical distribution and infilling rates have not been well documented at large land scales. Remote sensing with either aerial or satellite images may provide a rapid means for accomplishing this task. Our objective was to compare the accuracy and utility of two types ...

Solar radiation directly and indirectly drives a variety of ecosystem processes. Our aim was to evaluate how tree canopy architecture affects near-ground, incoming solar radiation along gradients of increasing tree cover, referred to as the grassland–forest continuum. We evaluated a common type of canopy architecture: tall trees that generally have their lowest level of foliage high above, rath...

introduction amount and vertical distribution of leaf area are essential for estimating interception and utilization of solar radiation of crop canopies and, consequently dry matter accumulation (valentinuz & tollenaar, 2006). vertical distribution of leaf area is leaf areas per horizontal layers, based on height (boedhram et al., 2001). above-ground biomass is one of the central traits in func...

the purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between vegetation cover and soil characteristics in order to determine the most important soil factors which affect on quantitative variations and types of vegetation cover in the study area. the study area is located in west of tehran province and southeast of hashtgerd, next to najm-abad village. after field studies, the index ...

A forest canopy is a complex system with a highly structural multi-scale architecture. Physical based radiative transfer (RT) modelling has been shown to be an effective tool for retrieval of vegetation canopy biochemical/physical characteristics from optical remote sensing data. A high spatial resolution RT through a forest canopy requires several geometrical and structural parameters of trees...

introduction: soil organic matter is influenced strongly by vegetation cover and management, therefore it is proposed as the main indicator of soil quality and health. the changes in soil organic matter status occur much more rapidly in the labile pools than in organic c. thus, labile pools can be used as early indicators of changes in total organic matter that will become more obvious in the l...

Plant-frugivore networks play a key role in the regeneration of sub-tropical forest ecosystems. However, information about the impact of habitat characteristics on plant-frugivore networks in fragmented forests is scarce. We investigated the importance of fruit abundance, fruiting plant species richness and canopy cover within habitat fragments for the structure and robustness of plant-frugivor...

This study provides a community-level analysis of how regeneration requirement and adult stature are related to tree allometry (diameter, height and crown size) throughout post-seedling ontogeny on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Comparing 65 species, gap species are taller, have higher diameter growth rates and occupy more low-canopy sites (≤10m canopy height) than shade species at small diamet...